Wine Bottling Calculator

Working out the bottle count before bottling day is the difference between a calm afternoon and a trip to the shop with half a carboy sitting open. Buy 5 to 10% more bottles than the arithmetic calls for, because breakage and ruined labels are certainties, not risks.

Standard bottle sizes:

• Split, 187 mL: dessert wines and single servings
• Half bottle, 375 mL: useful when you want to taste the same wine at different ages
• Standard, 750 mL: the universal size, and 12 of them make a case
• Magnum, 1.5 L: only 6 to a case. Wine ages more slowly in a magnum because the ratio of cork surface to wine volume halves, which is why collectors prefer them
• Double magnum, 3 L, and Jeroboam, 4.5 L: 4 and 2 to a case respectively

A case is 9 litres of wine, not twelve bottles. That catches people out when ordering cartons and dividers for anything other than standard bottles.

What you need per bottle:

• One cork, natural or synthetic
• One capsule or shrink cap
• One label, plus a back label if you use them
• About 15 g of wax if you dip the tops instead of capsuling

Choosing the cork matters more than the bottle. A cheap agglomerate cork is fine for wine you will drink inside two years and a poor bet beyond that. If the wine is meant to age, buy the longest natural cork your corker will handle, and expect to pay several times more for it than for the glass around it.

Bottling losses: count on 1 to 3% of the volume disappearing into sediment, the wine left in the hose, and the pump. Bottle with slightly more wine than the target requires.

Sanitation is not optional. Every bottle, bung, hose and filler needs sanitising with a sulfite solution or a commercial sanitiser immediately before use, not the night before. A single contaminated bottle in a case is enough to make you doubt the whole batch.